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Evergreen Resources plans re-completions at Pioneer this year Company bringing in own equipment; plans more wells in 2002, evaluation of Matanuska-Susitna prospect to be complete within two years Kristen Nelson PNA Editor-in-Chief
When Evergreen Resources Inc. President and CEO Mark Sexton told the Alaska Support Industry Alliance last August that the company hoped to be drilling coalbed gas wells in Alaska in 2001, he talked about the shallow gas leases the company had applied for in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and said the company would look at combining those leases into a unit.
Then, in May, Evergreen announced that it had acquired the Pioneer unit in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough from Unocal Alaska and Ocean Energy Inc., who had drilled several coalbed methane wells in the unit.
Evergreen still plans to do work in Alaska in 2001, but that work will be on Pioneer unit acreage, re-completing the existing wells, Sexton told PNA June 12.
He said the company will be sending its own equipment to Alaska later this year to re-complete the existing wells and said that the company will drill additional wells in 2002 to meet obligations for the unit and to further evaluate the potential in the unit.
Evergreen is a couple of years away from a decision to fully develop the Pioneer unit, and will be evaluating results of the re-completions this year and the seven or eight wells the company will drill in 2002 as part of the unit obligation, Sexton said. But if results from the re-completions and the next batch of wells are good the company could be drilling in the neighborhood of 100 wells on the 50,000 acre unit. The target at Pioneer, Sexton said, is about 1/2 trillion cubic feet of gas recoverable over a 20-30 year field life, produced at daily rates of 50-100 million cubic feet. Talking to local communities Evergreen has been talking to local communities about access to gas for Matanuska-Susitna communities such as Houston, Sexton said, and about how the company operates.
Evergreen’s goal is to be unobtrusive, he said.
“Evergreen Resources has a strong history of working with local contractors and landowners,” Sexton said, and noted that the company received an Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission environmental award for its Raton basin, Colorado, produced water programs (see May issue of PNA, page B21).
Since August, Evergreen has been out talking to people in Alaska, and the message is that the company likes to employ local people and has a good record with local hire and contractors.
“We want our future neighbors in Alaska to smile when they hear Evergreen Resources,” Sexton said. Major development in southern Colorado Evergreen Resources has more than 600 producing coalbed methane wells in the Raton Basin in southern Colorado: more than 400 wells that Evergreen drilled and another 200 wells that it acquired. The company employs more than 100 people in Trinidad in southern Colorado to work on the wells, pipelines and gathering system.
“It was not our intention to turn Evergreen entirely into a coalbed methane company,” Sexton told The Alliance in August, “but those seemed to be the best opportunities available to us and so we have focused on coalbed methane and become a technology leader, largely because of our completely integrated approach to it.
“Not only do we operate the wells, but we also drill the wells, frac the wells, cement the wells ourselves.”
Evergreen started slowly in the Raton Basin: four wells in the first year, then seven wells, then 15, then 25. Then the company’s drilling activity jumped to 65 wells one year, 85 the next and then 100 wells. “We’ll continue at at least that rate for the foreseeable future and perhaps accelerate,” Sexton said.
In addition to operating all of its own wells, Evergreen has installed the gathering system and provides a lot of the critical services.
“By owning its own equipment,” he said, “Evergreen is able to experiment a lot with a lot of different drilling and completion techniques and we’re still experimenting with drilling and completion techniques…”
The fracture stimulation technique that Evergreen will use in re-completing the Pioneer unit wells is one it has fine-tuned in the Raton Basin, Sexton told PNA.
Evergreen has its own rig, a small one capable of drilling to 5,000-6,000 feet, and its own fracturing equipment, which was built to the company’s specifications. The company also used a coiled tubing for fracturing in the United Kingdom last year, and that worked so well that Sexton said the company was going to try it in the Raton Basin.
In addition to using its own equipment to develop prospects, Evergreen is also looking at different ways to use gas.
“Power generation is an option for us in the U.K. and I think it’s an option here, too,” he told The Alliance audience. There are 1 megawatt power plants that can be containerized to control noise and put in residential areas, he said, “although developing the market mandates that we go slowly and work on that.”
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